


Eats, Shoots, and Leaves

by ishafel



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-25
Updated: 2011-01-25
Packaged: 2017-10-15 02:10:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eames is a forger, not a lover. Pre-movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eats, Shoots, and Leaves

“...orphanage,” Eames explains. “It started with the small stuff, you know, the usual-- pickpocketing, a spot of cat burglary here and there; we did a little bit of art forgery on the side, mostly Impressionist knockoffs for the tourists. And then, of course, some genius got hold of a PASIV, and darlings, let me tell you, no one is better at this sort of thing than children.”

Cobb and the kid are mesmerized, hanging on every word, and he spins them a hell of a story, only ten percent of which is true. But the whole time he's looking past them, watching Cobb's wife, with the sad, haunted dark eyes he's only ever seen from east African women who've watched their babies starve, from Holocaust survivors, from people who've dreamed so much and so often they love the dreams more than the waking world. You could see limbo in this woman's eyes, if limbo were a place.

Eames could love a woman who looked like that, but he couldn't save her. “We knocked off the British Museum a couple of times-- just minor artists, mostly, Landseer, Renoir, the odd artifact, but what we specialized in--.” He knows what's going to happen; he's seen it before. There'll be a kick, and when they wake up, someone will be dead.

This job is over. Eames is going to go back to the hotel and book a flight, and in the morning he'll be gone, and at least it won't be him that's dead. “Blackmail,” he says. “Mostly politicians, the occasional cricketer, pop stars-- I do love pop stars, their wallets are practically bottomless.” He can't bring himself to look at Cobb's beautiful wife any longer, it's all he can do to meet Cobb's eyes, the poor sad fuck who doesn't seem to realize the real world can implode just as easily as a dream.

But he can't walk away, not without saying something, so on the way out he buttonholes the kid, has to work to come up with a name. “Listen, Arthur,” he says, “your boss and his wife, they need help. More help than you can give them. Shit is going to get very, very real--.”

The kid's shaking his head, his lips moving, no, no, no. Eames slides a business card into the breast pocket of the kid's suit, pats the narrow chest. “You're good at what you do, Arthur. I can use a point man, someone to run interference with the clients, hold things together. You need a job, you give me a call, love.”

“Fuck off,” the kid spits, Dom Cobb's words, Dom Cobb's attitude in that prissy prep school accent.

“Later, kid,” Eames says. “I've got a plane to catch.”

In the morning he takes the first flight west he can get, watching the blue Pacific crash against the California coast. Pity isn't in his repertoire, and neither is guilt, but he wonders uneasily if there was something else he should have done.

And then he changes planes, he changes countries, he changes names and nationalities and the man he is on the other side could give a fuck about dumb Dom Cobb and Cobb's tragic hot wife and their little point man.

Three months after that, a man he knows in Japan tells him Cobb murdered the wife and is on the run, and two days after that the point man's banging on his door.

Eames only uses the office in Sydney as a front for a certain type of client. It's bright, cheerful, and completely sterile. Which means he's armed only with his charming smile and quick wits when the kid comes in half out of his head and raving.

Eames can tell things are bad because for once Arthur doesn't look like his mother dressed him. The knife-edge creases of his trousers are long gone, and he's shed the suit coat and vest and rolled his sleeves up, and he even has faint stubble coming in, which means he must be old enough to shave after all.

Eames fingers the chip in his pocket and waves the kid to a chair. “Arthur, pet, I'm going to make you some coffee, and you can tell me all about it.”

“What did you do?” Arthur demands. “What did you say to her?” He's angry, but underneath it Eames thinks he knows. Knows that whatever went wrong had been wrong from the start.

“I'm so sorry, darling,” he tries. “About both of them.”

“For Christ's sake. Dom didn't-- he would never have.”

Eames waits, patient for once. “He didn't push her,” Arthur says, and Eames can almost see the rage leaking away and the pain filling in. “She jumped. What I don't understand is why. And I don't understand how you knew, how you saw something Dom and I didn't.”

“I'm a forger. I make my living reading people.” Oh, dear, he doesn't say, my poor boy, a blind man could have read it in her face, but you only had eyes for her husband and he couldn't see anything that wasn't a dream.

And then Arthur cries, and, because it's the only way he knows, Eames gets him drunk and takes him to bed.

He'd expected Arthur to be prudish, virginal, but Arthur is as rough and as greedy as any mark Eames has ever made. His mouth is hard and desperate on Eames', and his fingers too strong in Eames' hair. He rips Eames' shirt getting it off, and eventually Eames shoves him down on the bed and holds him there one-handed until he can get the rest of his clothes off.

Waiting doesn't slow Arthur down any. When Eames leans over him to kiss him, Arthur's hips come off the bed to thrust against his, and he pulls Eames down on top of him like the feel of Eames' skin against him is a totem.

Eames knows what he wants, and he's willing for Arthur to have it, but he never thought it would be like this. Little Arthur, in his three piece suits, working careless fingers into him, selfish and angry and ruthless and as good at this as he is at taking point.

“Slow down, love,” he says gently, but Arthur is beyond that, beyond enjoying it, frantic to have it finished. It's rare for Eames to have misread someone so badly.

Arthur pushes into him, too quick, too much of an angle, and when Eames moves against him, trying to get comfortable, he gasps and says, “Fuck off with the names, Eames, they don't mean anything when you use them on everyone.”

That's Arthur, hip-deep in someone's ass and still using complete sentences. But when he pulls out and thrusts back in, Eames loses his train of thought entirely. And then they're rocking against each other, Eames' cock hard and untouched between them, still too fast and too rough.

Arthur's crying again, Eames can feel it against his neck, and he lifts his hips into Arthur's thrusts and wonders if this was a mistake. Maybe he should have tried talking to the kid.

When Arthur comes, he bites Eames' neck just where it joins his shoulder, so hard that Eames cries out, and then he passes out on top of him. Eames pushes him off and palms himself a couple of times, finishing, his body shaking with the shock of it.

After a while he gets up. There's blood in his mouth and a little blood on the sheets and his neck is a steady, throbbing pain. Arthur is sleeping for what's probably the first time in a week, his breathing steady and even, and all the worry and grief smoothed from his face.

Eames takes a shower in Arthur's bathroom, letting the hotel's hot water run and run, and then he puts on his own trousers and a pale blue shirt from Arthur's luggage that still looks pressed. He leaves Arthur without a note, without looking back, and takes a plane to Johannesburg for a job he'd meant to turn down.

He doesn't see Arthur again until Cobb comes looking for help with an inception, and he calls Arthur darling as if nothing had ever happened.


End file.
